


She'll Walk Alone

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: First Meetings, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:44:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5874658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt <i>Peggy & Angie: the day they met.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	She'll Walk Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilly_C](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilly_C/gifts).



> Title adapted from a popular song of the era ("I'll Walk Alone").

It had been ... a day. Again.

Peggy stretched her aching shoulders. The office was mostly dark, with no one in the room save for a couple of agents on night duty. Somehow _she_ never seemed to clock out when most of the others did, and not because she was hard at work on a case -- if so, she thought wistfully, she shouldn't mind in the least -- but because of their habit of dumping paperwork on her desk on their way out the door.

As if she had nothing better to do but type reports.

_But you don't,_ she thought, and a bleak bitterness tainted the thought.

The war had been a nightmare, the ruin of so many good people. And yet she was not finding civilian life too much of an improvement. She didn't want to be back there, of course: the privations and difficulties, the endless nights, the fear, and of course the many, many deaths -- 

She locked down that line of thought quickly.

No ... the war was over, and the world was brighter for it. But ... she'd thought she was meant for better things than this.

She heaved a long sigh, and got up. At least when she was typing, she was too busy to think, and that was often a good thing.

Too busy to eat, as well. Her stomach growled.

She left her desk neatly tidied. The men on the night shift did not even notice when she left.

 

***

 

One thing she liked about New York was that the city truly never did sleep. No matter how late she left the office, she found no shortage of places to eat. Her usual habit was a brief stop into a deli or an automat, where she stayed just long enough to pick up a sandwich, which she took back to her room to eat. She kept tea things in the room. There was no need to leave except to work. Brief conversations with her roommate Colleen, who worked a factory night shift and only saw her in passing, were the extent of her social interaction off the clock ... and, given how her colleagues ignored her except to dump busywork onto her, might well constitute the entirety of her world.

She was not sure how long she stood facing the row of machines in the L&L before she realized that she could not stomach another sandwich eaten alone. Not tonight.

"You okay, hon?" the waitress called across the room, from behind the counter. 

"I'm fine, thank you," Peggy said absently. She drew a breath and turned away from the machines. Tonight she would have a proper hot meal, sitting down. Why not? She could afford it. She had nothing else to spend her money on, after all. "May I see a menu, please?"

A quick smile slanted across the waitress's face. She raised a hand with a pencil in it, and used it to point to the big menu board behind the counter. "Got it all there."

"Oh. Thank you." Peggy tried to be as flexible as possible; she was not particular in her eating habits. Still, she was used to a rather different sort of restaurant. Before the war ...

But no. There was no _before,_ not anymore. It was _after,_ and she was in America, and she was a young working woman just like many others.

"Sit anywhere you like," the waitress called. "I'll be there in a jiff, soon as I finish up the tickets here. Gladys, she's the day girl -- sweetest thing in the world, but she always leaves an awful mess after the supper rush."

"Of course," Peggy said, and chose a booth by the window, where she could look out. There was almost no one else in the place, just a couple of men at the counter, reading newspapers and nursing cups of coffee over the crumbs of their dinners.

She was staring out the window at the headlights of the passing cars, letting her tired brain drift, when the waitress breezed over with a coffee pot in hand. "You look like a gal who could suck down a cup of joe," she remarked.

"Actually ... Angie," Peggy said, glancing at the waitress's name tag, "I would greatly appreciate a cup of tea, if you have it."

"I think we got some in the back. Coming right up." As she swept back over to the counter -- Peggy couldn't help admiring her energy -- Angie called over her shoulder, "It's true, what they say? You English folks love your tea, huh?"

"Well, many of us do."

"I'm a coffee girl to the core myself." Her voice was slightly muffled as she rummaged in a cabinet. "Always woke up with a cup before school and another after. Didn't do me any harm. Still, different strokes for different folks, right?"

Angie brought her a cup of lightly steaming water and a cheap paper tea bag. Peggy plunked it into the rather-less-than-boiling water with barely a flinch. If the war had done one thing for her, it had done away with her ability to be choosy about tea. Provided it was a) hot, b) hadn't been stewed for hours, and c) did not taste as if it contained a majority of grass clippings, she didn't mind it. Also, items (b) and (c) were negotiable depending upon circumstances.

"You know, I've seen you in here plenty," Angie said, and Peggy looked up in surprise. She had thought herself comfortably anonymous.

"You have?"

"Sure. You always looked so classed up. The hats are real nice." Angie pointed to the little uniform cap pinned to her hair. "Not a piece on mine, of course. What'll you have, English?"

Peggy looked at the menu board again. It was typical American workingman's fare, as she understood it: hamburgers, meatloaf, ham-and-beans. "What do you recommend?"

" _Not_ the beef stew," Angie said emphatically. She leaned forward a little. "Not supposed to say this, but you don't want to see what they put in _that._ Everything but the moo, right? Meatloaf ain't half bad, though."

"I'll take that, then." She stirred her teabag in the water as it slowly darkened. "May I have milk for my tea, please?"

"Comin' up. Meatloaf will be out in a few. As you can see, we ain't busy tonight." Angie winked. "You picked a good night to come in -- that is, if you don't mind being yakked at by yours truly."

"I don't mind at all," Peggy said, and she found herself smiling, helplessly and completely, for the first time in what felt like forever.


End file.
